Hmm... no matter what I do I can't get a refresh faster than every 6 seconds.
I compressed the jpg in the original code to 0
I've tried all your codes @jmseight
Nothing will get below (or above) 6 seconds... am I being thick?

Oh and does anyone know how to get it to pick up the mouse pointer in the screen capture... doesn't seem to do that at all...

Fantastic - down to about 1 second updates now. I have eye strain from looking at my monitor, but suddenly, I can use my kindle to work ) how cool is that!

Thank you all

Last thing I need is a way to capture the mouse pointer at the same time...
any ideas anyone?

The mouse pointer is usually handled inside the video device driver, and not in the framebuffer. I have seen code to make the system calls needed at codeproject.com, as I recall. Try looking there (hopefully their site search engine works better than trying to search mobileread.

Some device drivers MAY put the mouse cursor in the framebuffer. Also, some video modes may do it too. Try changing your video accelleration settings (to the lowest settings). That might do it, but it will make other stuff run slower...

Eek, I wouldn't know how to run it in the VM.
Nah, turning off the hardware accel didn't do much, but thanks for the suggestion.
And yep, it's a windows box (xp).
I'm brand new to python so still finding my way. One thing I thought was perhaps I could just draw a new pointer on top of the image after it's been captured.
Haven't had much luck so far - can't even get the bloody thing to tell me where the mouse actually is...

Eek, I wouldn't know how to run it in the VM.
Nah, turning off the hardware accel didn't do much, but thanks for the suggestion.
And yep, it's a windows box (xp).
I'm brand new to python so still finding my way. One thing I thought was perhaps I could just draw a new pointer on top of the image after it's been captured.
Haven't had much luck so far - can't even get the bloody thing to tell me where the mouse actually is...

Although that project uses C#, you should be able to adapt it to C by using the same Win32api calls that it makes. Or find a different project.

To download source from codeproject, you may need a free login account. Code Project downloads typically use a COPL license (which is much like MIT or BSD, allowing commercial use).EDIT: Okay, this shows a variety of ways to capture the screen in C (some with mouse pointer):http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/...ing-the-screen
This one is LGPL, so for commercial use you would have to wrap it in a DLL.

It draws 'x' letter instead of actual cursor image.
However, because of the delay (around 1 second) it's inconvenient to use it for pointing and clicking items if you only look at the reader screen. I'm thinking about adding a mouse cursor in the HTML page and quicker updates of its position, independent of screen image updates (new positions could be retrieved with AJAX requests).

Thanks for the thought Geekmaster, but I'm equally new to C, so I'll stick to python for now.

Fantastic W126 - didn't realise getting the mouse pos was that easy!

I like the idea of speeding up the mouse refresh rate, that makes a lot of sense. Originally, I was planning to pan the screen around with the mouse. I know this will be incompatible with your idea, but for those wanting a bigger desktop, here's the code to insert...